The find was uncovered in an open field near Dorstone Hill,
Herefordshire in the UK. For decades, amateur archaeologists have
noticed pieces of flint blades in the area and wondered whether
the land there contained relics of a long-forgotten time.

When Thomas and his team began excavating, they found two large
burial mounds, or barrows, that could have held anywhere from
seven to 30 people each.

The smaller barrow contained a 23-foot-long (7 meters) mortuary
chamber with sockets for two huge tree trunks. Digging deeper,
the researchers uncovered postholes, ash from the timbers, and
charred clay from the walls of an ancient structure.

These burnt remains came from what were once two long-halls, the
biggest of which was up to 230 feet (70 m) long, with aisles
delineated by wooden posts and several internal spaces.

Though it's not clear exactly who built the halls and barrows,
the building construction is similar to that found in England
between 4000 B.C. and 3600 B.C, predating the construction of
Stonehenge
by up to 1,000 years.

Time of transition

The period was one of social upheaval, when the original
hunter-gatherer culture in the area gave way to an
agricultural lifestyle with much more rigid social hierarchies.

"These are communities for whom the inheritance and maintenance
of wealth becomes important," Thomas said.

Evidence from the current and other sites suggests the community
deliberately burned the structures down

"Although the roof and doors of wattle and daub will burn quite
quickly, the main timbers will take a long time to be burned, and
that requires you to feed the fire," possibly over several days,
Thomas told LiveScience.

The burial mounds were
made from the charred remains of two massive halls. Here, a
reconstruction of what one of the halls would have looked
likeHenry Rothwell, University of
Manchester

Memorial structure

Neolithic people may have originally built the large halls as
communal gathering spaces.

But once some critical event happened about 50 to 100 years later
— perhaps the death of a leader or important social figure — the
community probably burnt the halls to the ground to commemorate
the event, using the ashes to make large burial structures,
Thomas said.

The discovery strengthens the idea that prehistoric people saw a
strong connection between the houses of the living and those of
the dead. Under this view,
ancient tombs were seen as representations of dwelling places
for the living.

"Archaeologists have talked for a long time about the idea that
you've got a relationship between houses of the living and houses
of dead," Thomas said. "Here, you've got it manifested in the
sense that the debris of a house was incorporated into a tomb."

The site drew people for generations. Long after the long halls
were burned, people added a series of stone burial
chambers to the grounds, Thomas said. The site also contains
a flint axe and flint knife that were placed there up to 1,000
years after the hall was first erected.